I had a pretty surreal experience in 4th grade that I hadn’t thought about until I read this thread. Details are still coming back as I write this.
Background: The school divided the grades into two groups, and subdivided the halves into classes as necessary to have less than the legal student/teacher limit. I think there were three classes per half as I went through. The timing of each half’s recess and lunch were staggered. Otherwise there were no differences as far as I know.
Anyway. I’m screwing around at recess one day when Mr Wooten, the gym teacher, calls me over, hands me off to another teacher who escorts me to see the Principal (who was later caught up in a scandal over falsifying attendance records to increase school funding, but that’s neither here nor there).
As it was told to me, Today I’d gone too far. My response to this was something along the lines of “wha, who?” So she’s brought in a girl named Colleen (whom I recognized by I don’t believe I ever interacted with her in any way before or after this event) and told some story about me kicking her coming down the slide (which, incidentally was a truly spectacular slide. It was about 7feet tall and all metal polished to high sheen by decades’ worth of sliding. VERY UNSAFE. You’d shoot off the end of it. Last time I drove by I noticed they’d taken out the old playground equipment and put in one of those wooden monstrosities.) To this I said something to the effect that I don’t know who she was, but if I did kick her on the slide, it was an accident and I was sorry. The end?
Not so much. The Principal didn’t buy this because, it was explained to me, I’d apparently been tormenting young Colleen for a while now, further there was a Pattern of Behavior. Thus began a parade of various kids I didn’t know telling me about things I’d apparently done to tease and bully them. I didn’t really have a way to comprehend or process this much less the principal’s demands that I explain myself each time. I asked if I could sit down. Denied. I began to feel sick and said so, she slammed a trashcan down and told me to puke in that if I had to. That moment is, I believe, when I lost my childlike trust of adults. I was 8.
And then something weird happened. The little sister of a friend of mine who lives down the street came in. Someone I knew! I remembered getting a ride home one day with her because I had to walk all the way to the other end of the school because that’s where the other half’s classes were held. At which point that it clicked for me that the reason I didn’t recognize this parade of kids is because they’re weren’t from my half. There was no way for me to have done anything those kids had been saying. And that moment is when I lost my childlike respect for the authority of adults. She told a story about how I’d pushed her around and how I’d taunt her dog whenever I went by her house. Then it was demanded that I explain why I was “tormenting” this girl’s dog or did I not remember this one, either.
I explained that Jack was her brother’s dog, not hers… and while I freely admitted that the dog barked at me whenever I went by their yard and that I barked back (yeah, well… hey, I was young), the dog and I got along quite well, thank you, when it wasn’t chained to a tree. Further, she wasn’t in my class. Her class was on the other end of the school. I never saw her at all on a normal school day.
I don’t know if it clicked for the principal too at that point or what. But the interview ended and the school day was pretty much over. I didn’t tell my parents about it. They never asked me about it. AFAIK, the principal didn’t tell them about it. It was late in the school year and 5th grade was at a completely different school across town. Nothing ever came of it to my knowledge. I scrupulously took notice of, and avoided, Colleen for the rest of the school year. Didn’t see her again.
I still can’t figure out what was going on. I know the theory I came up with at the time was that Colleen had enlisted her cohorts from the other half in a conspiracy against me. That seems like an awful lot of planning for 8 year olds now. And I never could figure out why they’d bother.
Anyway.
I’ve also been told a story about when I was four and being accosted by the neighborhood bully (who, had the better part of a decade and about 100 pound on me) having my brothers urging from the sidelines to punch him in the nose. Reportedly I jumped up (as in, I had to jump to reach that high) and gave him a bloody nose.
That would be the only fight I’ve ever been in, and I don’t remember it.
Otherwise, people pretty much left me alone throughout school on that front. I had two incidents outside of school. One ended up in my parents calling the cops and going to non-judicial binding arbitration with the kid. One ended up fizzling out when the would-be hero realized that “me and all of my fag friends” in the car at the time included the very big boyfriend of of a girl I knew glowering from the back seat. Said girl told me a couple years later that a lot of the bullying set left me alone because they were scared of me. I weighed 135 pounds in high school and took unnecessary science classes because I liked them. Dork, yes. Weird, yes. Scary?
